Either have children or bring in adults – this is the choice offered by the latest report from the LaSER analytical center "Latvia 2040: demographic reality and future scenarios."
To maintain the economic development of Latvia, according to the findings of the report, there are only two options:
– higher immigration with the associated challenges of integration,
– or higher birth rates.
However, even such measures will not be able to fully compensate for the decline in population in the medium and long term, the report emphasizes.
The report presents the demographic trilemma of demographers Paul Morland and Philip Pilkington — a structural contradiction between three choices: low birth rates, economic growth, and low immigration. According to this concept, in the long term, it is only possible to sustain two of these three elements, while the third inevitably becomes a victim.
Thus, if the population of Latvia chooses not to have and raise children while striving for gradual economic growth in the long term, immigration will be required.
If immigration is unacceptable and birth rates remain low, politicians and society will have to resign themselves to economic stagnation and rapid aging of the population.
In turn, to preserve both economic growth and the ethnic and cultural integrity of Latvians (without immigrants), the only way is to have significantly higher birth rates, the report explains.
Since, according to statistics, there will be no more new children, but there is a desire to see economic growth, there is only one solution left – to import foreign labor. It is also clear that hardly anyone from North America and Western Europe will come to Latvia. Therefore, we are waiting for waves of migrants from Asia and Africa.
